"Poetry appeals to the imagination, that faculty of the mind which enables the intellect to know the things of the senses from the inside--in other words, to experience by empathy things other than ourselves and to make of that experience a new form."

So writes Dr. Louise Cowan in her 1998 essay, "The Necessity of the Classics." Cowan goes on to note that this capacity of the imagination is central to the rationale of liberal education: "[I]t is not so much to further individual success or to produce 'new knowledge' or even to preserve the monuments of the past. Rather, it is to give form to this creative impulse in human culture." It is in the context of such a view of poetry, the imagination, and education that the idea of the classics has been sustained for centuries.

The same year that essay was published in The Intercollegiate Review. Louise Cowan, a professor of English at the University of Dallas (then and now), was a guest on the MARS HILL AUDIOJournal, discussing her book Invitation to the Classics. Now MARS HILL AUDIO is pleased to announce the availability of an MP3 download of Cowan's wise essay as part of our Audio Reprints series.